As a high school track coach, Richland High's Bruce Blizard has met hundreds of youths each year. And in his 27 years at the Eastern Washington school, he's seen teenage spirit produce dozens of better-than-the-big-screen stories.

To Blizard, Elizabeth Duncan will always be the determined three-sport senior she was in 1998. For it was Duncan, Blizard said, who gave him the most exciting athletic moment of his life, fueled by a spirit he hadn't seen before or since.

"That's why it was so shocking to hear what happened, because you forget that they've grown up," he said.

Saturday morning, the 26- year-old runner was on the sidewalk of Boyer Avenue East when a Pontiac Grand Am turning left lost control and stuck her, police said. Duncan died at the scene.

The Pontiac's driver was 16.

Instead of calling Duncan to wish her a happy birthday Tuesday, her father, Dennis Duncan, was with family in Richland, preparing for her Saturday funeral service. Co-workers from Brooks Sports, where she worked in customer service, left flowers at the crash scene and shared stories of her at Zoka Coffee, where Duncan always got her Americanos with an inch of steamed soy milk.

A kid sister to a pair of brothers, Duncan was a woman who made known her belief in Jesus Christ.

"At the same time, she was a real person who people could relate to on a lot of levels," her dad said.

Blizard's favorite sports moment came at a regional track meet, waiting for Duncan to run the leadoff leg in the 1,600-meter relay. The team was in lane eight, and almost nobody thought they had a chance.

Coach said there was an intensity in Duncan's brown eyes -- the same intensity that led the Bombers' basketball team to a school-best third place finish at the Class 4A state basketball tournament a season earlier.

Duncan ran a personal best and the team dropped eight seconds to qualify for the state meet.

"That kind of improvement doesn't happen often in sports," said Blizard, who watched the team place third at state. "And it sure as hell doesn't happen often in high school athletics.

"Failure was not an option for her."

During her junior season as a Washington State University soccer player, Duncan had eight assists, tying a school record. She had 68 career starts and helped the Cougars to the 2000 NCAA Tournament. Three days before she died, Duncan registered for the Chicago Marathon, co-worker and running partner Karly Wade said.

"I don't know how exactly to describe it," she said. "She just sparkled.

"The first day I met her, she asked me if I brought by running shoes."

Since 2002, there has been only one accident in the intersection of 24th Avenue East and Boyer Avenue East, according to Seattle Transportation Department records. In that April 2005 case, a driver turning onto Boyer ran a red light and stuck a jogger, who suffered minor injuries.

The King County medical examiner said Duncan had skull, rib, pelvis and extremity fractures and blunt-force injury to the head. The 16-year-old driver was not cited or arrested, Seattle police said, which is not uncommon in such cases. The department's investigation of the incident is likely to take at least a month, spokeswoman Renee Witt said.

Tuesday, the people Duncan worked with covered her gray-walled cubicle with dozens of flowers and cards. Some stopped and looked. Some held back tears.

Each of them read the slogan on a sign Duncan taped to her computer monitor: "Life's short. Run long."

"She ran every day and inspired you to be as she was," Wade said of Duncan, who completed the 2007 Mercer Island half marathon in 1:24:58. "Just knowing her brought out a better person in you."